GRAND RAPIDS -- After coming here from Somalia in 1996, Ahmed Sheikh Mohamed found the U.S. to be the land of opportunity.

He had a grocery store, sent his kids to college and took a $15,000 family vacation to Saudi Arabia.

The trouble is, the government says it all came at taxpayers’ expense.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said Mohamed “made a fortune through the fraudulent redemption of food stamps,” and “represented himself and his family as the deserving poor to defraud various welfare agencies of funds meant for the less fortunate.”

Mohamed is to be sentenced this afternoon. Kessler, who put losses at $659,000, asked that U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell impose a significant sentence.

He said Mohamed became a U.S. citizen in 2004. Two years later, he opened Rayan Phone Card and Grocery, catering to the Somali immigrant community in Grand Rapids, Kessler said.

Kent County Department of Human Services in late 2007 received an anonymous report that Rayan and another store, Halal Depot, were trading electronic food-stamp benefits for cash. The U.S. Department of Agriculture then videotaped undercover operations at the store. Mohamed and his son, Mohamed Isse, “repeatedly gave the undercover informant cash and other ineligible items for his … benefits,” Kessler wrote.

After using a search warrant at the business and defendant’s residence, authorities found a handwritten ledger that showed he had been extending credit to others and collecting payment in food-stamp benefits, the government said.

There were hundreds of pages of entries, Kessler wrote.

“In a signed, sworn statement, the defendant admitted he had been extending $10,000 to $14,000 per month in credit to 100-200 customers, and the loans were effectively repaid by the U.S. taxpayers, not the borrowers,” Kessler wrote.

While taking in the money, he told welfare agencies he worked for minimum wage and obtained more than $180,000 in welfare benefits for his family, which includes a wife and nine children, the government said.

He obtained housing subsidies, which covered most of his monthly $1,000 rent, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Pell Grants for his children to attend college, and assistance for heating bills meant for those with low incomes, Kessler wrote.

Kessler said Mohamed appeared to have no money when he sought assistance, but actually had thousands in undisclosed bank accounts

“As a perverse result, honest taxpayers – many of whom in fact earned much less than the defendant – shared their limited resources to provide the defendant free housing, food, medical care and cash. The taxpayers even financed the college education of defendant’s children, while many were undoubtedly forced by economic circumstances to forego the same privilege for their own children.”